The Journalist (Falling Action)

"But I wonder why you are so vulnerable in
writing and not in person" She may have sneered.

These were her last words before her
caressing goodbye from our quiet demise.

That simple single-sentence manifesto
breaking my Brando bravado.*

And as though I had nothing to lose I
replied wryly, slurring my sussing.

So I mentioned how I've trudged through pangs left
and right, ladies and gents slipping and pissing over;

how my then is none of her goddamn now, or at least
not until we're holding hands but peeling apart;

how she might be "the reason for the word 'bitch',"**
or that it wouldn't suffice, so I'll take "cunt," please;

how we are all vulnerable when we write. Diarylocks
aren't craniums and ribcages, and catharsis is tarrish.

So I drove home like an eighteen-wheeler that
you don't have to be granite to be [called] a man

and that spider silk thread-lined pens fit well into
both couture lace and blue-collar denim hands.

In our last ecstasy I hummed a love for her.
She read the inconsistency of my charmed and charming

voice, and smiled blankly out of pity or ignorance. She
let the conversation slide into something______else.


*Marlon Brando is considered a quintessential "strong silent" type of man, and remains one of Hollywood's crowning epitomes of (Italian)-American masculinity.
**Outkast wrote a song titled "Roses" which includes these lyrics in reference to one girl, the audience of the song's lyrics.